Starting today, KBLR-39, the Telemundo station in Las Vegas, will once again have a weekday local newscast.
Beatriz Moncayo has been hired to be the main anchor the live, locally produced shows that debut at 6 and 11 pm and Leticia Castro, who left the Telemundo station in Houston 2 weeks ago, will be the newscast’s weather anchor. Xochitl Sandoval is the station’s news director.
The launch of the newscasts, with beefed up local staff, comes 8 years after Telemundo eliminated local news from Las Vegas and several other of its TV stations. At the time, the network created the Telemundo Production Center (TPC) in Dallas, where it produced and broadcast a regionalized news product for those markets.
Since the closure of the TPC, and a renewed multimillion dollar-commitment from the company to invest in local news, Telemundo has been producing a newscast for Las Vegas out of its Phoenix station. Friday, June 27 was the last day of the Phoenix-produced Vegas newscast.
Since KBLR didn’t have the proper facilities to launch the newscast, Telemundo partnered with the NBC affiliate KSNV to use their studios and control room.
Prior to taking the anchor job at KBLR, Beatriz was a correspondent for NTN24, RCN’s 24-hour news channel. Before that she was L.A. bureau chief, reporter and host for Mega TV. She previously worked at Telefutura as an anchor reporter.
This is a return to Las Vegas for Leticia. Before working for Telemundo Houston, she spent two years as weather anchor at Univision Las Vegas.
For the past 7 years, Xochitl has been working in the sales and marketing division of the Telemundo station in Las Vegas. She previously worked as an executive producer at the TPC and news director at Telemundo Dallas.